Renegotiating Identities and Cultural Legacies Chapter Twelve Be(com)ing Uzbek

Four Cases of Uzbekness
The Oasis of Bukhara
The first of the four case studies within Uzbekistan is in the oasis of Bukhara or, more precisely, the district of Romitan. One of the oldest permanently settled spots in the world and famous for its legacy of Islamic scholarship, Bukhara inhibits a very prominent position within Central Asia. It is also one of the best-known places for tourism due to the countless architectural ruins from different historical eras. Located in the geographical center of contemporary Uzbekistan, Bukhara is largely surrounded by deserts and therefore fairly distant from the neighboring oases. This also affected the ethnic composition in the region. As there are no pasture areas anywhere nearby, the newly arrived nomads had to settle down and in most cases quickly assimilated into the local population.²⁰
Today, Bukhara is famous throughout Uzbekistan as the stronghold of Tajikness in the country. Although officially they number only some five percent of the population in the province, the amount of native speakers of Tajik is probably around 50–60 percent. This is especially the case in the western and northern parts of the oasis where they form village clusters where differences with Uzbeks are hardly recognizable and, in fact, instantly denied.²¹ “We are one people with two languages,” is a frequent claim. By contrast, other groups settling in the region are less integrated, even if they speak closely related languages. This is true, for example, for the local Turkmens, who de facto speak Uzbek with a slight accent, or the Ironi, who are distinguished by their Shiite background.
What is striking in this context is the nearly universal existence of bilingual proficiency, which is considered almost a cultural prerequisite. As a consequence, people fluidly switch languages on a daily basis, whether at work, on the street, or within the family. Some also change their primary tongue during their lifetime, perhaps due to marriage or a change of residence. There is even no clear tendency in public as regarding a dominance of Uzbek as the national idiom. In recent years, however, more and more schools using Tajik as the language of instruction have closed because parents believe their children will be at a disadvantage in their future careers. This has accelerated the centuries-old process of assimilation.
Due to widespread bilingualism, marriages between Tajik- and Uzbek-speakers are not considered a problem, and they are indeed very common. In a survey conducted in several villages of Romitan district, almost half of all brides who had moved there from outside spoke a different mother tongue than their husbands. Very often, however, there was an existing kinship relationship between the two families to build on. Indeed, kinship and physical proximity seemed much more important when choosing a marriage partner than language or ethnicity. This, of course, results in a situation where mixed families are the norm rather than the exception, and therefore any differences in cultural patterns and social organization are hard to sustain.²²
More important is a common idea of being Bukharians (buxorolik), and the two ethnonyms are rarely ever used in this sense. When asked what the ethnicity or language of a child born into a mixed family would be, the answer typically was “it depends.” One can even identify as Uzbek if both parents are Tajik but the larger surrounding neighborhood uses the other language. Belonging and personhood are thus fundamentally the consequence of socialization and a shared cultural environment. This, by definition, distances Uzbeks and Tajiks in Bukhara from those of other provenance and contributes to a strong sense of local identity. Other local groups, such as Turkmens, Kazakhs or Ironi, may integrate into this amalgamation depending on their perceived similarity in cultural attitudes.